The instant invention relates to a manually mobile firewood log splitter wherein the structural apparatus combination thereof provides a self-contained splitting assembly mounted upon and carried by means of a wheeled support frame therefor the latter of which serves first as a transport means in accomplishing manual removal from one location to another in displacing the splitting assembly for accurately positioning the splitting blade thereof upon a firewood log section preparatory to commencement of splitting operations thereon, and second as a combined user work station and immobilized splitting assembly platform to provide both user protection features and accuracy in retention of set of splitting blade positioning during the carrying out of splitting operations.
Under the circumstances of current and ever increasing use of wood as an alternate and/or supplement fuel source to both electricity and petroleum products in providing domestic heating needs, and whereas an average size reasonably modern domestic dwelling for a family of four located in the Northeastern United States, for example, when fully heated with a wood burning stove or furnace requires an estimated six to eight cords of cut, split, and seasoned hardwood per heating season to provide reasonable heating comfort, and in view of the increasing costs for commercially available firewood, many wood burning heat users are as in bygone times now acquiring wood lots and cutting and splitting their own firewood.
Traditional among those relatively simple hand tools available for accomplishing the splitting of firewood log sections are the sledgehammer and wedge or splitting maul combined version thereof, either of which tools are fairly inexpensive and reasonably suitable, with proper eye protection, for use in meeting occasional firewood splitting needs. There are now further available for such use in the foregoing application various firewood log splitting devices which embody the employment of slidably displaceable supported splitting wedges in combination with sledgehammer impact tools, exemplary of which are those as respectively taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,982,572 to Kortendick dated Sept. 28, 1976, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,211,264 to Cross dated July 8, 1980.
For use by commercial firewood suppliers there has been developed a whole family of trailer mounted integral engine hydraulic powered heavy duty ram splitters, exemplary of which would be that as taught by Fuller in his U.S. Pat. No. 3,285,304 dated Nov. 15, 1966.
The present invention provides a firewood log splitting device within both a cost and capacity capability for accomplishing firewood log splitting intermediate the simple hand tool implements and the powered heavy duty ram splitters, is manually mobile and self-contained with a splitting assembly in one version embodying a slidable hammer means for accomplishing splitting blade driving and in another version a manually operable hydraulically powered ram means therefor both of which versions feature the interchangeable use of different configured compound wedge blade structures.
Employment of slidable hammer means for use in driving pointed implements is well known in the arts of post, stake, and pike drivers such as respectively taught in U.S. Pat. No. 299,086 to Over dated May 20, 1884, U.S. Pat. No. 2,629,985 to McDowell dated Mar. 3, 1953, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,050,095 to Prather dated Aug. 21, 1962. Even more pertinent to the present teaching employing a slidable hammer means for accomplishing splitting blade driving is that disclosure by Mattson in U.S. Pat. No. 2,475,041 dated July 5, 1949, for a percussive type wood chisel. In the area of hydraulically driven splitting rams the teaching by Fuller cited supra is exemplary.
The employment of compound splitting blade structures to improve and enhance the firewood log section splitting device efficiency is likewise taught in the prior art, for both manual and powered splitting devices, also as respectively exemplified by the previously cited teachings of Kortendick and Fuller.
It should be understood that some of the features of the instant invention have, in some cases, structural and functional similarities to certain of those teachings separately set forth in the prior art disclosures heretofore cited and briefly discussed. However, as will hereinafter be pointed out, the instant invention is distinguishable from said earlier inventions in one or more ways in that the present invention has utility features and new and useful advantages, applications, and improvements in the art of firewood log splitters not heretofore known.